Contrary to public perception, the building of a new road or the construction of a new road network is not an easy matter. MATTHEW XUEREB caught up with the recently-appointed director of the Malta Transport Authority’s Network Infrastructure Directorate, Architect PAUL BUHAGIAR, who spoke about the long process that is undertaken before road projects are actually implemented

The Malta Transport Authority is planning a series of road projects which would facilitate traffic to SmartCity because of the increase in volumes that such a project will generate.

Architect Paul Buhagiar, the director of the ADT’s Network Infrastructure Directorate, explained that the plans are in the process of being drawn up after the developer, the Malta Environment and Planning Authoroity and ADT will finalise a number studies to determine the estimated traffic volumes that the project will lead to. He said the expected traffic counts will determine how the road has to be designed and that these studies were based on the number of people expected to be employed once the project has been completed.

Mr Buhagiar said that the first part of the large, multi-phased project that has to be done is the road between Bieb is-Sultan and Kalkara. The directorate is planning to leave this road without a wearing course (the final layer of asphalt) so it would not be damaged by the trucks travelling to and from the SmartCity area until it is fully developed. This road would also serve to eliminate almost completely any negative impact that the project would have on the urbanised centres of Cottonera.

He said the ADT is also planning new and upgrading several other roads to link the SmartCity project directly to Tal-Barrani Road.

Architect Buhagiar has been appointed as designate director of NID since October last year but in January assumed the role of Director of the Network Infrastructure Directorate. The directorate is composed of around 50 employees who are further subdivided into a number of sections dealing with road planning, road construction, road maintenance, trenching permits, residential roads and a section for quality assurance.

Asked about upcoming projects and road projects which are being planned, Mr Buhagiar said that the tender for the reconstruction of the Marsascala Bypass is nearing completion and the ADT is soon expected to issue a call for applications for this project, which is estimated to cost around Lm3.8 million.

This project, he said, will have to take into consideration the fact that the re-development of the Sant’Antnin Waste Recycling Facility has been given the go-ahead by Mepa. This road project is expected to take around 44 weeks to complete and will involve the straightening of the long and winding road, making it easier to drive on and, more importantly, safer.

This is the major EU cohesion fund project that will be starting this year. Another two would be the reconstruction of Valletta Road in Zurrieq – starting from in front of ST Microelectronics up to the entrance of Zurrieq, and the reconstruction of part of the Birkirkara Bypass, between Ganu street and the roundabout in front of Lija’s Transfiguration Avenue. This project is being planned because of the acute problem of flooding in this part of the road and would therefore require the introduction of proper storm water management.

Part of the project will be the reconstruction of the roundabout across Ganu Street which cars frequently crash into. He admitted that the road is not aligned properly so cars usually find it difficult to slow down in view of the inadequate deflection of the carriageway just in front of the roundabout.

Asked about the multi-level junction at the Kappara roundabout, Architect Buhagiar said the project is still in its planning stages but the tender for this project, which is expected to be a design and build one, is expected to be issued later on this year or at the beginning of next year. This project forms part of the Trans European Network – Transport (TEN-T) projects. This is scheduled to be tackled in earnest once works on the Manuel Dimech Bridge are completed by September.

Turning to residential roads which either need upgrading or to be constructed for the first time, Architect Buhagiar said the government has drawn up a list of 450 roads which will be constructed by 2008 with an investment of around Lm8 million. Of these, the ADT has already completed 130 and another 75 of them are being carried out at present and are expected to be completed by the end of May.

He explained that normally the tendering/adjudication process for residential roads takes a longer time for roads estimated to cost over Lm20,000 as the contract would be handled by the Government’s Contracts Department, whereas for smaller estimates faster departmental contracts are used.

On the Trans European Network – Transport (TEN-T) programme, Architect Buhagiar said Malta is proposing to undertake a number of projects for the upgrading of the TEN-T network which are estimated to cost around 110 Million Euro. Most of these will be paid from European Union funds. The funding period is between 2007 and 2013.

Asked about the contractors available in Malta to carry out the road projects in the pipeline, Architect Buhagiar said there are around 22 contractors who carry out this kind of work. Last year most of these attended a three-month vocational course led by a German expert in the field. During this course, the contractors carried out on-the-job training with a specific road project, namely the reconstruction of part of Garden road at Zabbar. At present, the rest of the contractors are doing the same course and the hands-on project being undertaken is the reconstruction of Triq it-Tiben in Marsascala.

He explained that the course is aimed at improving the quality of the work carried out by these contractors. He said that every residential road project carries a two-year guarantee whereas guarantee period for arterial roads is five years. Before contractors are fully paid their dues, the quality assurance section within his directorate perform or commission a number of tests on the road to ensure that the quality of the work reach the set standards.

He said independent laboratories are commissioned to carry out these tests to determine the quality of the final product. When asked, Architect Buhagiar said the quality of the asphalt used in road projects has to match that of a previously approved mix design by NID.

Replying to a question on what planning roadwork involves, Mr Buhagiar said this involves a long and complicated process before a tender document is issued for contractors to submit their tenders in order to be assigned the job.

He said a number of studies primarily soil engineering ones and procurement of relevant traffic data are undertaken by directorate employees to determine exactly what are the requirements for the specific road and to see whether the road project will have a spill-over effect on neighbouring roads and junctions.

This then leads the directorate’s technical staff to start planning the geometry of the street in question, paying particular attention to traffic flow and safe roadside criteria as well as other considerations such as storm water, electricity, water, sewage and telecommunication services which need to be passed in proper channels, and ducts or pipes placed underneath the road or footpath.

The problem usually encountered, he explained, is that land is limited and the architects and planners have little where to manoeuvre. He said the street overall level changes and transverse falls are other equally important considerations, especially if the road in question already has developed boundaries.

On the storm water culverts, Architect Buhagiar said that as much as possible, the plans would include reservoirs so that the storm water is collected and used for irrigation purposes.

Moreover, he said, planning a road also includes complex traffic management schemes while a project is under way as well as the proper implementation of a maintenance programme in order to achieve the design life span of the road.

The authority has been recently criticised for spending more than the budgeted amount in several road projects which were undertaken, including those financed by the Italian Protocol. When asked, Mr Buhagiar said that it was very difficult to predict precisely how much a road project would finally cost because whereas in other civil works foundations costs rarely exceed 20 per cent, this figure is well over 50 per cent for practically all road works.

No matter how many soil investigation tests are carried out the degree of uncertainty of the exact nature of the underlying strata will always remain a significant variable that can never be fully taken care of at pre-tendering stage. Moreover, there is also another unknown entity deriving from non-exact data of the existing underlying services that can cause considerable cost escalation at road construction stage.